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2022-04-13 Government Corruption

[TK News By Mike Taibbi] More and more, we're told outright war isn't just necessary and right, but the thing that will solve America's existential problems.

Robert Kagan, neoconservative writer and husband to Deputy Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland, wrote a piece called "The Price of Hegemony" in Foreign Affairs last week that was fascinating. If I’d written his opening, people would denounce me as a Putin-concubine:

Although it is obscene to blame the United States for Putin’s inhumane attack on Ukraine, to insist that the invasion was entirely unprovoked is misleading.

Just as Pearl Harbor was the consequence of U.S. efforts to blunt Japanese expansion on the Asian mainland, and just as the 9/11 attacks were partly a response to the United States’ dominant presence in the Middle East after the first Gulf War, so Russian decisions have been a response to the expanding post–Cold War hegemony of the United States and its allies in Europe.

Kagan went on to make an argument straight out of Dr. Strangelove. Instead of doing what some critics want and focusing on “improving the well-being of Americans,” the U.S. government is instead properly recognizing the responsibility that comes with being a superpower. So, while Russia’s invasion may indeed have been a foreseeable consequence of a decision to expand our hegemonic reach, now that we’re here, there’s only one option left. Total commitment:

It is better for the United States to risk confrontation with belligerent powers when they are in the early stages of ambition and expansion, not after they have already consolidated substantial gains. Russia may possess a fearful nuclear arsenal, but the risk of Moscow using it is not higher now than it would have been in 2008 or 2014, if the West had intervened then. And it has always been extraordinarily small…

About the author: Robert Kagan is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a contributing columnist for The Washington Post. Kagan is an American neoconservative scholar, and critic of U.S. foreign policy and a leading advocate of liberal interventionism. A co-founder of the neoconservative Project for the New American Century, he is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Wikipedia

Posted by Besoeker 2022-04-13 03:42|| || Front Page|| [11131 views ] Top

#1 Robert Kagan, neoconservative writer and husband to Deputy Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland,

This is essentially where I wanted to stop reading.

Posted by Besoeker 2022-04-13 04:08|| 2022-04-13 04:08|| Front Page Top

#2 Was a time when one of the things a judge would sentence a vandal to was to clean off the graffiti they sprayed or pay to repair the vandalism they had done. Wouldn't it be great to see these people convicted of their war-mongering ways and sentenced to spending the rest of their lives cleaning up the messes they have made?

Posted by M. Murcek 2022-04-13 07:03|| 2022-04-13 07:03|| Front Page Top

#3 He's f**king out of his mind, but it's nice to see Nuland's husband finally admit the obvious -- that his wife and her bosses bear the ultimate blame for this mess

Posted by Omeamble Ebbereng8903 2022-04-13 09:36|| 2022-04-13 09:36|| Front Page Top

#4 I think we can catch the Ruskies with their pants down!

Posted by Abu Uluque 2022-04-13 11:39|| 2022-04-13 11:39|| Front Page Top

#5 "I'm not saying we won't get our hair mussed, but I do say it won't be more than 10-20 million killed. Tops. Depending on the breeze..."

Posted by M. Murcek 2022-04-13 11:50|| 2022-04-13 11:50|| Front Page Top

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